


gonna give tips

by endquestionmark



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 06:32:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6144673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t that Rhys is distracted so much as the fact that he’s overwhelmed, incapable of paying attention to anything other than the most immediate concerns. What it means, regardless, is that Rhys doesn’t notice when the door to Jack’s office opens, or when Jack crosses the room to lean on his desk — hands braced wide, no doubt, weight shifted to one side — but he does notice when Jack says, grinning audibly: “Wow. I go to one meeting and you steal my office, my clothes, and my favorite toy. Have I mentioned lately how much I love you?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	gonna give tips

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I can even blame anyone else for this one. Look.

It isn’t that Rhys is distracted so much as the fact that he’s overwhelmed, incapable of paying attention to anything other than the most immediate concerns. What it means, regardless, is that Rhys doesn’t notice when the door to Jack’s office opens, or when Jack crosses the room to lean on his desk — hands braced wide, no doubt, weight shifted to one side — but he does notice when Jack says, grinning audibly: “Wow. I go to one meeting and you steal my office, my clothes, and my favorite toy. Have I mentioned lately how much I love you?”

Rhys gasps for breath, and Nisha digs her heel into his back, right between his shoulder blades. “Don’t distract him,” she says. “We were finally getting somewhere. Seriously, where did you find this one? Talk about all enthusiasm and no technique.” She tugs at Rhys’ hair, a warning, and he turns to hide his face against the inside of her thigh, biting tentatively at fading bruises in order to buy himself a little time. “Nice try,” Nisha adds, to Rhys this time, and she sounds so amused and knowing that he loses his focus all over again, laid idly open by her casual arrogant certainty. “You can do better than that.”

“Wow,” Jack says, after a second, though between Nisha’s hand in his hair and her foot against his back and the cant of her hips — the way that she had just shoved him down to his knees, and taken him by the hair, and said _Show me what you’re good for, then_ — Rhys almost misses it. He doesn’t let Jack distract him, this time, as much as he would like to: Rhys doesn’t think about how he wants Jack to do precisely the same, to hold his wrists behind his back, to grin like that against the back of Rhys’ neck and say: _She’s being too nice to you, kid. Seriously? I mean, wow, not to be a total dick or anything, but yeah. This is almost funny, except it’s too pathetic._ What Jack does say is: “Maybe I should go to meetings more often. That jacket looks almost as good on you as it does on me.”

“That’s cute,” Nisha says, and Rhys digs his fingers into his own thighs and tries harder to get some sort of response, to push past her unshakeable cool and make her demanding again, make Nisha show him what she wants and how to be good for her. She’s enjoying it, watching him try and fail and knowing all the while that it makes him even more desperate, and Rhys knows that begging won’t do any good, but he’ll try it sooner or later anyway. With Jack in the room, it’ll just make things worse than usual; they both love to set him up to fail, and watch him struggle until he’s exhausted, and only then will they give him exactly what he wants. It’s a game, and Rhys can’t help playing, hooked on the inevitability of a forfeit as much as he is on the vain hope of a victory. “You know it looks better on me,” she adds, breathless, so he must be doing something right.

Maybe it’s the way that Rhys is starting to get careless, and Nisha likes the faint edge of teeth, the way he’s running out of ideas and options; maybe it’s the way he can’t quite keep quiet anymore, tiny awful noises of desperation; maybe it has nothing to do with him at all, and perhaps it’s just that Jack’s watching, and Nisha loves a chance to show off. High noon or here, in an empty room, in Jack’s chair and Jack’s clothes with Jack’s distraction of the moment kneeling between her legs, flushed and flustered: Nisha makes trouble when she can’t find it, and Rhys can’t quite break himself of the contact high of it. He can’t get past the way he knows that she’ll take him to pieces, and he’ll just keep coming back anyway.

At the moment, though, it feels like a victory when Nisha arches up, her leg slipping off the arm of the chair as she pulls him closer, and uses her grip on his hair to hold Rhys in place so that she can use him just the way she likes. She rocks her hips up, grinds against his mouth slow and hard and filthy, and curses under her breath, and when she comes Rhys knows exactly what she looks like, though his vision is a blur of deprivation and desperation. Eyes closed, and her head thrown back, and her expression halfway between a grin and a snarl: Rhys doesn’t know which he wants it to be, and doesn’t care.

“See?” Nisha says, and when Rhys looks up, her eyes are half-closed and she’s smirking, smug and lazy and generous with her approval. “That’s better.” She rubs at the corner of his mouth with her thumb, tips his chin up and inspects him, and Rhys thinks about how he must look — hair a mess, flushed down to his collarbone, shirt open where she’d held him by the throat — and then Nisha drops him, leaves him to wait breathless and barely upright while she swings around in the chair and beckons to Jack. “You’ve got competition, baby. I sort of like this new one. Doesn’t mouth off as much.”

“Oh, come on. You love it,” Jack says, leaning back against the desk with his arms crossed, and Nisha grins, legs still set wide in a mockery of Jack’s own physicality, a dare and a threat and a challenge.

“Sure I do,” she says, and reaches up to undo the clips of her stolen waistcoat one at a time, shifts and sighs happily and holds up a finger when he uncrosses his arms. “What was that you said about almost as good? Remind me.”

“Nish,” Jack whines. “That’s cheating.”

“The hell it is,” Nisha says. “You love it.” She grins up at him, the same naked threat on display, and Jack looks the way he always does when she surprises him: as if he can’t look away, and can’t believe his luck. “Doesn’t make it any less true.” She undoes the first button of her shirt and pauses at the second. “So?”

“No way,” Jack says, and Nisha shrugs.

“Suit yourself,” she says. “Guess I’ll just have to lose this, and the jacket, and the—”

“Fine!” Jack says. “Fine. It looks better on you. Happy now?”

“Good boy,” Nisha says, and gets to her feet, presses against Jack shoulders to hips and brackets him in against the desk, leaning him back. “Was that so hard?”

Rhys isn’t distracted, but he waits, listens to the faint rustle of clothing and the way that Jack hums appreciatively when she kisses him, digs his fingertips into his thighs and doesn’t turn to watch. He’s seen Jack and Nisha together before — in bed, in a shootout, in the early hours of the morning when Rhys can’t sleep, and the world wears thin: when it’s impossible to tell anything but the truth, Jack lays his head on Nisha’s shoulder — the unexpected tenderness of it is always too much for him to stand. “What can I say,” Jack says, eventually. “You bring out the best in me.”

“Liar,” Nisha says, immeasurably fond. “You just like the excuse.”

“Same thing,” Jack says, and then silence again, and Nisha laughs. “Hope you saved some for me,” he adds, after a while, and Rhys looks up again.

“This?” Nisha says, and looks at Rhys. “I thought you didn’t like leftovers.”

Jack shrugs, and looks Rhys over, a predatory appraisal that makes Rhys shiver. “It’s the quiet ones,” he says. “Looks like he’s got some fight left in him, wouldn’t you say?”

Nisha hums, noncommittal. “Sure,” she says, and comes over, hooking two fingers into Rhys’ collar and hauling him up. “Leave me to do all the work, right?”

“Like you aren’t enjoying this,” Jack says, and Nisha grins, leading Rhys down the steps and keying in the code to the private side rooms.

“Toys, huh,” she says, instead. “You going to stand there all day?”

“No, ma’am,” Jack says, and follows her. “Where do you want me?”

Where Nisha wants Jack is at her back, taking her jacket and her waistcoat and unbuttoning her shirt and pushing it from her shoulders. Where Nisha wants Jack is sprawling back against the headboard, legs falling open as she strokes him, her other hand wrapped around his throat, tight enough that Rhys can hear the way that Jack is struggling for breath, the faint thready sound of it. Where Nisha wants Jack is, finally, helpless: biting down on her shoulder as he comes, a fresh bruise to go with the fading marks at the base of her neck, down the wings of her collarbone, the faint dark fingerprints along the slope of her breast. Where Nisha wants Rhys is sprawled across Jack’s lap — and Jack pulls off his clothes as well, yanks at his tie until Rhys loses his balance and tips over, entirely undignified — scrabbling at Jack’s shoulders as she fingers him open, just as indulgent as before, and taking her time.

“Good at that, isn’t she?” Jack says, the faint mismatched texture of his lips against Rhys’ temple, and the even fainter curve of his smile. “Gotta say, kid, I’m kind of jealous.” Nisha snorts, and Jack smooths his hand over the small of Rhys’ back, runs his fingers up the ridge of his spine, down Rhys’ sides to dig his thumbs into Rhys’ hips, right above the bone. “I mean, not that you don’t look like you’re enjoying it,” Jack adds, “but you’re being kind of quiet here, kid.”

“Told you,” Nisha says. “That’s why I like him. He just takes it,” she adds, and trails two fingers up from the crook of his knee, pinching at the inside of her thigh with her nails. “See?”

“Fuck,” Rhys gasps, and jerks forward.

“Hey!” Jack says. “It talks. How about that. Come on, Rhysie,” he says. “Make this worth my while, huh?”

“Yeah,” Rhys whispers, “okay,” like a promise, face turned into the crook of Jack’s neck. Nisha pulls away, climbing off the bed, and Rhys adds: “Please?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jack says. “You’re fine. We’re gonna take care of you, baby,” he says, voice pitched low and rough, right against the corner of Rhys’ jaw, and punctuates it by scraping his teeth across Rhys’ throat, directly over his exposed pulse. “I like you like this,” he adds. “I mean. All needy, and easy, and practically begging? Looks good on you, Rhys. Looks real pretty.” Rhys moans at that, a half-choked helpless gasp of a sound, and Jack turns to look at him. “You like that, huh?”

“Stop distracting him,” Nisha says. “Again. Lie there and look useless, why don’t you. It’s what you’re best at.”

“The word you’re looking for is _handsome_ , sweetheart,” Jack says, hands back on Rhys’ hips. “Just helping you out here.”

“More like lazy,” Nisha says. “Leave me to do all the work.” She climbs onto the bed behind Rhys, and Jack slides his hands down to Rhys’ thighs, spreads his legs and holds him open, so proprietary that Rhys wants to fight. Instead he folds, just like he always does, lets Jack hold him in place while Nisha lifts his hips and presses into him an impatient inch at a time until he can feel the straps of her harness, the angles of her hipbones — how badly he wants to rock back, and how firmly Jack and Nisha are holding him in place so that he can’t, as if it takes them no effort at all — how easy it is to lie there and let them use him, just a prop to be shared.

“Yeah, well,” Jack says, and trails his fingers up Rhys’ thigh, traces where Nisha’s hips are flush to his, just to make him shiver. “Looks like you’re doing a whole lot of nothing right now.”

“What was that?” Nisha says, and moves — a fractional adjustment, but she snaps her hips forward, and Rhys gasps — arching up, shocked into motion.

Jack grins. “Nothing.”

“I didn’t think so,” she says, and takes Rhys by the hips, pulling him back against her, and starts to move in earnest. She’s impatient, even now, and doesn’t give him a chance to catch his breath or get used to any of it, just fucks Rhys — steady and relentless and almost too much, so close to being more than he can take — and doesn’t bother to be nice about it, either. Rhys doesn’t look, but he knows that she’s grinning, that same half-snarl. It’s just so much — her focus, all of her attention on him, that firebrand intensity — and every time, Rhys thinks that he won’t be able to stand it, can’t take any more, and every time he does anyway.

It costs him, though, every time: in dignity, in the looks that he gets in the hallway, in the bruises that he can’t quite hide and the marks at his wrists, and it costs him in the way that it’s harder, every time, to convince himself that he could stop anytime, say no and walk away and not miss this. Every time, Rhys gets closer and closer to some unseen edge, some point of no return, and he knows that one day he’ll get just a little too curious, and he keeps on doing it anyway. One day he’ll get too close; it’s too inevitable, now, for Rhys to find it as terrifying as he once did.

“Hey,” Jack says. “Come on, stop hiding, huh? Face like that, let me see.” Jack spans Rhys’ throat with his fingers, pushes Rhys up until his back is arched to the point of pain and he starts struggling to breathe. Where Nisha hadn’t bothered with gentleness, nails digging in where she’d held him, Jack isn’t any more vicious than he has to be: he simply holds Rhys in place, lets him struggle until he’s too breathless and exhausted to fight, stops scrabbling at Jack’s shoulders and chest and gives in and lets him see. Rhys lets Jack watch the way that he’s flushed, and the way that his hair is falling into his face, and the way that he’s bitten his lips to keep quiet, and Jack watches him — how he looks and sounds and feels — and owns him.

That, more than anything, is what gets under Rhys’ skin, what creeps between his ribs and traitorous down his spine and along all the crossed wiring of his body: it makes him better, sets him alight, gives him purpose and use and function. In utility, he has value; in service, he has worth. Caught here between Jack’s gaze and Nisha’s grin, Jack’s hands on his throat and Nisha’s on his hips, lungs empty and vision going dark at the edges, Rhys feels necessary. “Well?” Nisha says, over his shoulder, to Jack. “Go ahead. I know you want to.”

“Aw,” Jack says. “You spoil me, Nish, really.” He loosens his grip on Rhys’ throat a little, thumbs still pressed to the underside of Rhys’ jaw. “Come here, kid,” Jack says, and kisses Rhys breathless all over again, greedy and vicious and amused by the way that Rhys gasps for air. His mouth feels swollen, from Nisha and now from the way that Jack likes to bite, just a little, before he sets his teeth properly and makes Rhys work for it.

“Please,” Rhys says, again, barely making a sound.

“Please?” Jack says. “Hey, babe, sound good to you?” Nisha makes a considering noise, hums in her throat. “You break it, you buy it.”

She sighs. “Fine.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Jack promises, and slides one hand down Rhys’ chest, leaving the other on his throat — taps at his exposed shoulder joint, traces the lines of his tattoos, digs his nails in lightly over Rhys’ breastbone and raises faint welts — and, finally, over the roundel of his hipbone and down along its curve. Rhys shudders, then, not sure whether to press forward or back, but at least Jack isn’t playing anymore: he jerks Rhys off, just a little too rough, and when Rhys comes he’s more relieved than he is grateful. He can still do this, be good enough and stubborn enough and pretty enough to be worth something; he isn’t too close to the edge yet. Rhys is still valuable. He still matters.

Nisha doesn’t let him fall this time. She still isn’t kind, particularly, but she doesn’t just leave him — smoothes a hand down his side before she pulls away — and, afterwards, she messes up his hair and leans in and says: “Guess you’re good for something after all, huh.”

“Thanks,” Rhys says, as much as he can manage. He’s still having a hard time getting enough air, but that’ll pass: it’s worth it, for her grudging praise, and for the possessive hand that Jack lays on his hip, and for the way that he knows that he’s done well. It’s worth it for the way that he gets to watch them together — Nisha’s knowing smile, and the way that Jack looks momentarily awestruck by her — and the secret shared intimacy of it. At any other time, it would be too much for him to stand; here, undone as he is, Rhys has nothing left to lose. There’s a wonderment to it, a strange grace.

Rhys wonders, sometimes, if he’s already too close. In the end: what does it matter? Next to these stolen moments, this casual familiarity, this bestowal of worth, it doesn’t. Next to them, nothing does. He buries the inevitability of forfeit in his chest and cherishes it like a mortal wound, a private ecstasis, a secret miracle; one day, Rhys thinks, it’ll kill him.

Until then, he holds it close and dear, and takes what he can get.


End file.
